We interviewed Justyn Larcombe at TedX Tunbridge Wells

Tino: So welcome back to Business First TV. My name is Tino, coming to you from Tunbridge Wells. We are at TEDx. For those of you are here on business and radio, you missed out, guys. Okay. This is Justyn. Justyn, welcome to the show.Justyn Larcombe: Hi Tino. Thank you.Tino: What are you gonna talk about today?Justyn Larcombe: I'm going to talk about compulsive gambling and how it ruined my life.Tino: Yes!Justyn Larcombe: And now how I'm helping other people to turn their lives around, particularly in the workplace.Tino: Amazing. Amazing. And how are you doing that? Is it courses that you're running or ...? Justyn Larcombe: I do two things. I work for a company called Epic Risk Management, who are a very specialist company going into the workplace, we'd be going to financial services organisations, professional sports, so the football teams, the rugby teams, the cricket teams, also prisons, schools and the armed forces. Tino: Okay. Justyn Larcombe: But I also have charity which I've founded which offers free recovery courses for a 15-week session up and down the country.Tino: It's an addiction, though, isn't it?Justyn Larcombe: Completely.Tino: Yeah.Justyn Larcombe: A complicated addiction, and not a well-understood addiction. It has two facets. It's got a physical side and a chemical side, the process of doing the same thing over and over again coupled with the endorphins that are secreted in the brain when you light up and stake the mortgage on something.Tino: Yeah, yeah, and I think it's very easy ... I think it's one of those ... I don't want to call it a slippery slope, but I think you can easily get addicted to something, can't you? You can, and especially slot machines, having been addicted to slots machines when I was a kid, and being paid on a Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon, when you've spent 120 pounds on slots, you know. You kind of go, "How did that happen?"Justyn Larcombe: Absolutely. Well, two bad things happened recently. One was the, in terms of gambling, one was the advent of the smartphone, which makes things so much easier. And the second thing is the absolute proliferation of advertising on TV. 18% of every advert is a gambling advert, and that is the problem when it comes to young people, particularly, who are three times more likely to become addicted to gambling than someone older who gambles.Tino: How do you feel about ... I'll ask you 'cause I won't give my opinion, but actually I do have an opinion. I don't like the idea of a gamble so easily accessible.Justyn Larcombe: Yes.Tino: You have adverts on TV, you're like on an app, you can walk past a ... go to any resort, it's arcade machines everywhere, and you and I now know that it's a losers game because those machines are set up for you to lose.Justyn Larcombe: Yeah.Tino: But what's a way around that for people? If somebody who's listening now who's stuck in a rut and they know that they make bad decisions, what would you say to them?Justyn Larcombe: I'd say talk about it. The trouble is that it's one of those addictions that you can hide. For me, I hid it for three years from my wife. And in that three years, I lost everything. I'd never gambled in my life till I was 40 years old. By the time I was 43, my family had gone, my house, my job, everything. And that's because I kept it secret.Tino: Okay. Justyn Larcombe: So if you're aware it's an issue, talk to someone about it.Tino: Okay. All right. Justyn, if people want to find out more, what's the best way for them?Justyn Larcombe: Best way is to find me. Maybe they can tweet me @JustynLarcombe, J-U-S-T-Y-N-L-A-R-C-O-M-B-E. Or they can find me on our company website, www.epicpgc.com. Or look up my charity, RecoveryTwo, the words "Recovery" and the word number two, T-W-O.Tino: Now before you dash off, 'cause I know you're up and about shortly, just us tell us very briefly. You've got books, courses.Justyn Larcombe: Yes, absolutely. All the course material we offer for free. We've got a course manual, which is quite long, but we've also got leaders' notes, everything else. We provide support and training for people who were thinking about running the courses. But we will also go into any organisation and provide prevention education talk workshop. And I think prevention is so much than curing.Tino: Justyn, thank you for your time today.Justyn Larcombe: Brilliant. Thank you now.Tino: You're welcome.